I Have Weird Dreams
I was on my cot when the fighting started. My intention at the time was to flee immediately, not being so loyal to my newfound friends as to risk my neck for them. A shitty warehouse was never going to act like a fortress, it was indefensible. The other kids didn’t exactly have any fighting skills - a team of useless kids was ony slightly better than one useless kid - so flight was the only reasonable option. The tall woman with the curly hair intercepted me, however, and I did the best I could with the only thing I had: a fan, which quickly turned to a weapon in my panicked hands.
That was the problem with my powers. Most of the time, I might as well not have had any. The only time I could do anything was when I was fucking terrified, and even then there was never any consistency. Maybe I could run really fast, maybe I could survive huge falls, maybe I could fight like a Matrix reject. But only when the alternative was death or something like it. Otherwise? Fucking useless.
My display of power seemed only to confirm whatever reason they’d had for coming here, and the curly haired woman explained that they wanted me to come with them. Whatever explanation they gave, it suited me well enough. I told the people I was leaving behind that I’d turned traitor, so they wouldn’t be worried about me, and left. They probably wouldn’t have tried to find me again anyway, but it made me feel better to pretend I was being selfless.
It was in some country that probably didn’t exist in Europe, a big old castle on a hill that should have belonged to Dracula. It turned out their currency was made of some strange sort of metal, which unsurprisingly I had plenty of. I guess my parents had left it to me? They looked like crappy aluminum batons, so I suppose it made sense I had no idea what they were. I took it down to the bank, where it turned out I could not only get them melted into coins, I could stamp whatever I wanted onto them as long as they were the right weight.
Curly haired woman was surprised, on my return, to see that I’d printed on my coins the image of a mythical creature local to the region. There was some foreshadowing that my powers were related to this creature, since the only thing consistent about the way they manifested was a heightened sense of smell. This probably meant I was some kind of lost princess but let’s pretend my dreams are more creative than that, for my sake.
In general I was no less miserable at The Creepy Castle for Gifted Youngsters than I was anywhere else. I didn’t even get to attend classes for the most part, since my powers weren’t really the sort of thing you could practice with. Everyone got assigned to a three person pod, in a variation on the buddy system, but I never talked to the girls in mine. I was busy moping, I guess.
The reason for the pod system became clearer the day the Black Wight came. YES THAT WAS HIS NAME YES IT IS STUPID but at the time this did not occur to me. Dude was pretty fucking terrifying, though, on a black horse with a shrouded face and cloak, a faceless army behind him. He was on an adjacent mountain when the alarm went off, posing with his cloak billowing in the wind. thankfully giving us plenty of time to evacuate the castle. Personally I thought we should probably defend the place rather than let the fuckoff huge castle get destroyed, but the curly haired woman was pretty adamant. Also not as worried as she probably should have been.
Thanks to the fact that I was scared out of my mind, I managed to get my pod packed up and evacuated to the nearest village in under five minutes. I probably could have helped everyone else out, too, but that was against the rules. Every pod for themselves, focus on helping your podmates and let others help theirs. The other girls and I bonded a little over my ability to run like a motherfucker and drag people along, so that was a nice bit of character development. I also noticed that something was weird about the Black Wight, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. We watched the castle burn down overnight, casting a warm glow over the fancy inn my inheritance was paying for.
A few days later, the castle was back. It turned out that we had someone in reserve that could turn back time in a given area. So they just rewound the castle to when it wasn’t a pile of ashes! Which explained why the curly haired woman hadn’t been too broken up about it. I guess this happened a lot? Not too often, though, since timeguy could only do something like that every few months. THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP about the constant danger or whatever the fuck, sure am glad I came to your stupid country. Everyone moved back into the castle and I went back to moping. I was slightly less mopey since people knew I had powers now, but still. Mopey McMopeface, that was my name.
It was a couple of months later when a hot guy showed up with his panties in a twist to see the curly haired woman. That was when I noticed that he smelled like the Black Wight! Which for the record was quite nice. This was maybe weird because I was a teenager and he was about 30 but WHATEVS, sexual tension. It turned out that the Black Wight was a sort of fucked up fire drill. If everyone at the school learned to get the fuck out as fast as possible when the Black Wight came, there was less risk of mass panic when the Red Wight came.
The Red Wight looked a lot like the Red Skull, because I read too many comics and lack creativity. While the Black Wight only inflicted property damage, the Red Wight would kill you, your dog, and then set you on fire. He would actively hunt down anyone within reach. His primarily goal was not just destruction, but death. He smelled rancid, as well, so he probably was not just a guy in a costume. He had an army of skeletons! Shit was terrifying! IT WAS MY MOMENT OF TRUTH.
The end.
